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Space

Six More Humans Successfully Carried to the Edge of Space by Blue Origin (space.com) 74

Posted by EditorDavid from the spacing-out dept.
An anonymous reader shared this report from Space.com: Three world travelers, two Space Camp alums and an aerospace executive whose last name aptly matched their shared adventure traveled into space and back Saturday, becoming the latest six people to fly with Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Mark Rocket joined Jaime Alemán, Jesse Williams, Paul Jeris, Gretchen Green and Amy Medina Jorge on board the RSS First Step — Blue Origin's first of two human-rated New Shepard capsules — for a trip above the Kármán Line, the 62-mile-high (100-kilometer) internationally recognized boundary between Earth and space...

Mark Rocket became the first New Zealander to reach space on the mission. His connection to aerospace goes beyond his apt name and today's flight; he's currently the CEO of Kea Aerospace and previously helped lead Rocket Lab, a competing space launch company to Blue Origin that sends most of its rockets up from New Zealand. Alemán, Williams and Jeris each traveled the world extensively before briefly leaving the planet today. An attorney from Panama, Alemán is now the first person to have visited all 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, traveled to the North and South Poles, and now, have been into space. For Williams, an entrepreneur from Canada, Saturday's flight continued his record of achieving high altitudes; he has summitted Mt. Everest and five of the other six other highest mountains across the globe.
"For about three minutes, the six NS-32 crewmates experienced weightlessness," the article points out, "and had an astronaut's-eye view of the planet..."

On social media Blue Origin notes it's their 12th human spaceflight, "and the 32nd flight of the New Shepard program."
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Six More Humans Successfully Carried to the Edge of Space by Blue Origin More

Six More Humans Successfully Carried to the Edge of Space by Blue Origin

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  • "Edge of Space" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stop the euphemisms. When is BO actually going into space?

    • Re:"Edge of Space" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Sunday June 01, 2025 @06:56PM (#65421085)
      They should ask Musk. His company does it 4 times a week with a 99.1% success rate.

    • Re:"Edge of Space" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Sunday June 01, 2025 @06:59PM (#65421089)

      You're asking the wrong question, you should be asking things more along the lines of:

      "When is BO going to send humans to space for more than a few minutes?"
      "When is blue origin going to send humans to orbit?"
      "When is blue origin going to rendezvous and dock with a space station or other craft?"

      For now, they've got an expensive carnival ride.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sirket ( 60694 )

      Blue Origin's New Glenn made it to orbit on January 16, 2025 so they've already made it to space. Obviously that wasn't a manned mission- but the rocket itself performed pretty well for a first flight and successfully delivered its payload.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by marcle ( 1575627 )

        As contrasted with Starship, which ain't lookin so good at the moment. Not to deny the amazing accomplishments of SpaceX, but space is hard.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      BO went to space, the (arbitrary) limit for space is 100 km and they went over it. Going to space is about how high you go.

      BO didn't get to orbit, but getting to orbit is not the same thing, it means going fast enough horizontally to avoid falling back on Earth, but not so fast as to escape Earth gravitational pull. Getting to orbit is about how fast you go. Some suborbital flights actually go higher than some orbital flights, for example, ICBMs. And we could imagine orbiting below 100km (so, officially not

      • They did reach orbit in January, though. Recovery of the booster failed, but not a bad result for the first flight of a new rocket (New Glenn). A very different beast than the hopper (New Shepard) they're using for tourists.

    • This is becoming ridiculous.

  • Stop reporting on tourism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thecombatwombat ( 571826 ) on Sunday June 01, 2025 @07:02PM (#65421091)

    Seriously. Did we spend all this time putting the names of everyone who flew across an ocean in a jet in newspapers?

    It's silly. They're reach people doing tourism. No one should care, no media outlets should be boosting them.

    NASA is getting constant attacks and defunding, and we're reporting on this nonsense like it's space news . . .

    • If this is a funding issue for NASA then maybe they need to get into the space tourism business to supplement the funds they get from Congress. Alternatively, NASA could get out of the business of sending people to space and be a regulatory agency on who goes where with what like the FAA and DOT.

      If there's private industry willing to spend money on developing rockets for what amounts to a carnival ride then that is still private industry developing rocket technology to the advantage of the government since

      • If this is a funding issue for NASA then maybe they need to get into the space tourism business to supplement the funds they get from Congress. Alternatively, NASA could get out of the business of sending people to space and be a regulatory agency on who goes where with what like the FAA and DOT.

        Why when that's already the FAA's job?

        • If this is a funding issue for NASA then maybe they need to get into the space tourism business to supplement the funds they get from Congress. Alternatively, NASA could get out of the business of sending people to space and be a regulatory agency on who goes where with what like the FAA and DOT.

          Why when that's already the FAA's job?

          Spacex, Elmo, and their fan club don't want regulations at all. Reference how pissed they were about the FAA having concerns, and Elmo taking a shitfit

      • The problem with profit motive is I am not going to do it unless there is money in it. There's no national strategy vs. greed, short term gain; not the same focus of effort like you got in NASA, that I guess was response to a perceived threat of commies.

        This is why the Russians and Chinese [independent.co.uk] will have a base on the moon long before a free market capitalist does. That doesn't advocate those state governments, but it does show that there is a limit to the speed and capability of private venture, imposed by the

  • Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Sunday June 01, 2025 @07:32PM (#65421137)

    Let the celebration begin! We have again sent six mega-rich people not-quite to space, so they can gawk at the Earth for a few minutes before coming back down, having accomplished nothing but causing additional air pollution and creating something for them to talk about on their social media feeds like they have had a religious experience, but will not influence their behavior or actions in ways that benefit people in all walks of life the way actual saints have.

    • BO employs advanced Engineers advancing outer space capabilities. The privileged passengers help enable. China space station also doing well. If only mankind could better cooperate but multiple approaches helps learn as well. BO a nice alternative or farm league for SpaceX .

  • Walked to the edge of my lawn today (Score:4, Funny)

    by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Sunday June 01, 2025 @08:10PM (#65421179)

    Felt like a genuine accomplishment.
    Didn't cost me a penny.

  • We prefer to call it retirement.

  • Yeah yeah, they passed the Karman line. But I think to qualify someone as an "astronaut" they should at least have to orbit the Earth ONCE.

    • Yeah yeah, they passed the Karman line. But I think to qualify someone as an "astronaut" they should at least have to orbit the Earth ONCE.

      What some people don't remember is there was a "Commercial Space Astronaut Wings" Program that was established in 2004 and ended in 2021, as tourist trips were nearing reality. They still keep records of who has flown to the Kaman line or above. So as passengers, they don't get wings, and they aren't Astronauts.

      The pity is that rather than ride the rock and enjoy the trip, come back and act professional, they pop cultured it with the hot crew suits, and the attempt to glam the project, then relied on the

  • Space (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Monday June 02, 2025 @05:18AM (#65421619) Homepage

    To the edge of.... the Earth.

    While technically that's an "edge" of what we call space, they don't get to space and it's certainly not the edge of space.

    We took them to the edge of the cliff on which they happily survive easily by just being human. Had them peer over it a bit.
      And then brought them home.

    It's really quite pathetic that after a ridiculous amount of time, we consider "going up in a plane" something akin to this generation's Apollo missions, and have absolutely NOTHING even close to what our grandparent's generation watched happen live on TV.

    • To the edge of.... the Earth.

      While technically that's an "edge" of what we call space, they don't get to space and it's certainly not the edge of space.

      We took them to the edge of the cliff on which they happily survive easily by just being human. Had them peer over it a bit. And then brought them home.

      It's really quite pathetic that after a ridiculous amount of time, we consider "going up in a plane" something akin to this generation's Apollo missions, and have absolutely NOTHING even close to what our grandparent's generation watched happen live on TV.

      It's history repeating itself.

      I really like that young people are interested in space again. But yeah, some people take advantage of that. We went to the moon and back several times, heading toward 60 years ago. Now we have adoring sycophants cheering when the Starship explodes - again. And the same people wondering why Elmo isn't the czar of all things space, with NASA and all others eliminated. And the FAA while we are purging anything in the way of DOGE.

      In some respects, Spacex is just doing old s

  • ... wasting billions and billions of valuable resources for the f*ck fun of it, well done usa. And crapping more hazardous materials in the atmosphere.

    • ... wasting billions and billions of valuable resources for the f*ck fun of it, well done usa. And crapping more hazardous materials in the atmosphere.

      I know, but you aren't going to dissuade Elmo from his Starship.

  • Nobody cares

  • The fact that no celebrities were on board to make fools of themselves means nobody cares about this kind of thing anymore. The latest Starship flight barely got a mention. Nobody cares unless it's either groundbreaking or a catastrophe.

    • I have a small connection to this story. As previously mentioned, one of the co-founders of Rocket Lab was the internet entrepreneur and space-nut Mark Rocket who changed his name from Mark Stevens. Many years ago, he was one of our tenants and a neighbor to us. My main memory of him is of him feeding left-over food to our hens. CEO Peter Beck set up Rocket Lab in 2006 with funding from rocket-mad angel investor Mark Rocket who became a 50% owner until he exited in 2011. Mark Rocket was originally booked to

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